


Hales

by elumish



Series: Werewolves 101 [7]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolves Are Known, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Politics, Professor Stiles Stilinski, Writer Derek Hale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-30
Updated: 2015-10-07
Packaged: 2018-04-24 04:15:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4905127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elumish/pseuds/elumish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Laura Hale is scary.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Laura Hale is scary.

There are lots of other words that describe her (hot, politically powerful, intelligent) but the one that Stiles notices first is that she is scary as hell. It’s not just because she’s tall and statuesque and dressed in a sharply tailored pants suit that Lydia would have fashion envy over. It’s because she’s an alpha, his boyfriend’s alpha, basically the country’s alpha (as much as anyone could be defined as the country’s alpha, and maybe he’ll get a chance to ask her about that while he’s here).

She surveys him with narrowed eyes for a few seconds, then opens her arms, and Derek leaves Stiles’s side to flow into her grasp and just sort of hang there, head on her shoulder, a low keening coming from his throat. Alpha Hale turns her attention to Derek, then (not that there’s any chance she isn’t keenly aware of any move he might make), curling around him and whispering something in his ear that’s too quiet for Stiles to make out.

Then Derek steps back and a little out of the way (and seriously, dude, leaving him to the mercy of Alpha Hale?), and Stiles shifts a little so he’s not throwing off any sort of aggressive or scared vibes.

“So,” she says, then stares at him, and he (barely) squashes the urge to parrot it back to her. Because he’s not suicidal, and he’d really like to keep dating Derek. “You’re with my brother.”

“Yes, Alpha.” He offers his hand, palm up and fingers loose, to her, and she stares at it for a second before her lips quirk up slightly and she takes it to inhale at his pulse point (and his heartrate might jump, just a little, but she doesn’t acknowledge it and neither does he). “I would like to offer my condolences for the loss of your family, Alpha.”

She releases his hand, and he fights the urge to wipe the fear-sweat off onto his jeans. “Is that so?” Neutral. Okay. Neutral is good, in that it’s not bad.

“I, uh—I’m from Beacon Hills. We all remember the fire.” He was just a kid when it happened, but he remembers the call to his dad, remembers shoving the flashlight and Spiderman comic under his pillow when his dad came in to tell him that there’d been a fire and he needed to go in, that someone had tried to hurt the Hales. He remembers being confused, because who would try to hurt the Hales, they were the best family in the town. (And it’s hard to forget when the details are plastered all over his bedroom walls, and he’s going to need to take that down before Derek comes over and sees it, and thank God Derek hasn’t come over yet.)

“Stilinski, is it? Your father is the sheriff, isn’t he?”

Wow, that’s actually kind of scary. “Yes, Alpha.”

“Laura. I don’t need Derek’s boyfriend calling me Alpha. And stop scowling at me, Derek; I like him.”

She does? “You do?”

Her face breaks into the closest he’s seen to a smile since he got there. “You look at my brother like you want to climb him like a tree—don’t make that face at me, Derek, I know the two of you are having sex, and if you’re not, it’s not for lack of him trying—and then wrap him up in a blanket and feed him soup until he smiles. And you greeted me properly as a non-emissary non-pack human meeting me for the first time. The President doesn’t even know how to do that.”

“It’s, uh—it’s my job, Alph—Laura.”

“So Derek said. PhD in Werewolf Studies with a focus on Human-Pack relations. But I’ve found that most people in your position—in your field—tend to think they knew better than us how we are supposed to act, so it is refreshing to meet someone who doesn’t. Now I would like to get to know you better, but I did ask Derek here for a reason, and I’m afraid that it cannot wait.”

Right. “Yeah, sure, I just—point me to a room, and I’ll go entertain myself. With my phone. By looking at things on my phone. Like cats. I like cats. And I’m going to stop talking now.”

Alpha Hale shakes her head. “If I hadn’t wanted you to be involved in this, you would never had made it through the door.”

That’s unnerving. “Okay.”

She smiles. “This is me informing you that I am open to your opinion on the topic we’re going to discuss. Yes, Derek, I did want to meet your boyfriend, but he’s also relevant.”

A brilliant smile lights up Derek’s face, and Stiles smiles back because how can he not. Because he rarely sees Derek as happy, as loose, as he is right now; even in bed, after coming, there’s always something in his shoulders, across his ribs, held tight. But now he just looks happy.

Alpha Hale clears her throat, and when Stiles snaps his attention to her, she’s smiling. “Now, if we’re all done mooning at each other, we do have work to do.”

Derek ducks his head, and she ruffles his hair. He says something to her, low enough under his breath that Stiles can’t pick it up, and Alpha Hale nudges her forehead against his temple, affection written all over her face.

“Okay.” She gestures towards the door. “Peter will meet us in there.”

Peter Hale is not who Stiles wants to meet. At all. It’s not that Stiles has ever interacted with him, or even seen him, but he’s notorious for being not quite all there. Like, occasionally explosively dangerous not quite all there.

But it’s probably one of the only chances he’ll get to talk to all the remaining Hale together, and it’s not like he has a choice anyway, so towards the door it is. Derek does the weird herding thing again, but it’s comforting now, having someone at his back. Being in a building full of predators tends to make one feel vulnerable.

The room is filled with a mid-sized conference table, with four seats per side and one at each end; Alpha Hale takes the end, gesturing for Stiles to take the seat to her right. It’s not like with humans, where the right-hand side is one of honor; it’s the left for werewolves, because it shows trust to let someone near their weaker hand. Derek doesn’t take that chair, but sits on the other side of Stiles, pulling his chair as close as possible without sitting on his lap.

They sit in silence for a second, Stiles’s leg bouncing up and down against Derek’s, and then the other door swings open and a man saunters in. He’s younger than Stiles was expecting, a self-satisfied smirk across his mildly-lined face as he heads to the left-hand chair; he’s their uncle, but he looks more like an older cousin.

“So,” Peter Hale drawls, sliding into the seat to Alpha Hale’s left, “you’re the one my impressionable nephew is fucking.”

Stiles blinks at him, because wow, okay. “Not quite yet, but I’m glad you think so highly of me, that I can seduce Derek. It’s not easy to do, you know.”

Derek snorts, burying his nose against Stiles’s neck, and Stiles would ask if he was okay if he couldn’t feel Derek’s smile against his skin.

Peter’s lip curls up in a snarl. “You shouldn’t be here, _human_.”

“You may think that, but ultimately it is Alpha Hale—uh, Laura’s decision.” He looks at Alpha Hale, who’s watching with an amused smirk on her face. Glad he could entertain her. “Would you like me to go?”

“That will be unnecessary.” She looks at Peter. “Play nice.”

Peter nods, the lines of his face smoothing out to something obsequious that Stiles doesn’t trust. At all. “Yes, Alpha.”

Laura nods. “Now, for what I called you here to discuss. Deucalion is pushing the Congressional Voting Reform, and if I don’t block it, there’s a good chance it’ll pass, at the very least, the House. Blocking it, though, will draw attention to this pack in a way that it hasn’t seen since the fire, and so I won’t do it without a discussion of it first.”

That’s fascinating, and Stiles has no idea why he’s in the room. “And me?”

“You are an expert in human-pack integration, and I would like a logical opinion who won’t be afraid of disagreeing with me.”

Stiles swallows a hysterical laugh. “Oh, I’m afraid of disagreeing with you.”

Derek laughs next to him. “You would argue with a tree if you thought it had an opinion.”

“Okay, that’s…kind of true.” Stiles looks at Alpha Hale. “Okay. So, uh—what is the Congressional Voting Reform?”

“What do you know about werewolf voting in Congress?”

Stiles takes a second to put together what he knows, because it’s been a while since he went over it in any sort of academic fashion (and he really doesn’t want to get it wrong, because that would be awkward for a whole lot of reasons). “Correct me if I’m wrong, but werewolves currently have observer status in the Senate—like DC, or Puerto Rico—and four votes in the House, which is approximately proportional to the werewolf population in the United States. The distribution of those votes is determined by an eight-member Alpha Council which, if I’m not mistaken, you’re on.” Stiles looks at Alpha Hale, who looks somewhere between bemused and interested. “Did I miss anything?”

“No, that’s all that you need to know. The Congressional Voting Reform would instead count werewolves as regular citizens for the sake of voting, allowing us to vote—and run—for Congress.”

That sounds like a stupendously bad idea. “And you oppose this?”

“I do.” She glances at her uncle, then at Derek. “I cannot speak for the other members of my pack.”

Derek shrugs. “I stand with you.”

“Peter?”

Peter Hale leans back in his seat, fingers steepled in front of him, and surveys the three of them for a second, then leans forward to rest his elbows on the table. “I say, let us be citizens. Let us take our territories and hold them the way they should be held, and take part in the ruling of this country as humans do.”

Wow, that’s pretty dramatic, as well as pretty short-sighted. “You’ll probably lose seats, you know, as a species. You have guaranteed spots at the moment; if this bill passes you won’t have any.”

Peter bares his teeth at him, and they’re elongated, sharp; next to Stiles, Derek tenses. “You doubt our ability to win, human?”

“I doubt the political system to ever go as you plan.” He looks at Alpha Hale. “Would you like my analysis?”

“Please.”

Stiles scrubs a hand across his mouth. “Well, I know why you have the system you do now; werewolves would not do well with having territorial werewolf controllers who aren’t their Alphas, which would by definition be the case with having werewolf members of Congress. As I said, there’s also a high chance that you would lose sea—”

An alarm goes off, sustained and high pitched, and everyone _moves_ (clattering chairs and acid in this throat and Derek shoving him off his chair and down as Peter and Laura shoot to their feet and the door opens).

“Report.”

A voice that Stiles doesn’t recognize—and that he can’t see, because Derek is basically on top of him, claws out and teeth long—says, “The hunters are here, and lines are drawn.”

Derek goes ramrod stiff, nails biting into Stiles’s arm, and Stiles swallows a noise of pain because Jesus fuck that’s like being stabbed. Alpha Hale speaks from over them, and she sounds furious. “The ashbreakers?”

“Dead.”

Oh, that is bad. Ashbreakers are pack-affiliated humans who stay at facilities and whose jobs are basically to break mountain ash lines keeping werewolves trapped inside. They are a security measure that’s necessary for big important pack locations, especially given the rise of anti-werewolf terrorism. And this is the only way that he’s getting through his panic at the moment, trying to remember the theory, the academic answers to the fucking disaster he’s walked into.

“Do we have any humans in the building?”

“No, Alpha.”

Except—Stiles struggles out from underneath Derek, blood running down his arm to drip to the floor (whoops), and Alpha Hale and Peter are both half-turned, and so is the man standing in the doorway. “I can act as your ashbreaker.”

Derek is behind him in a second, arm around his waist, pulling him back against his body. “No fucking way.”

Stiles turns to look at him, or tries, because Derek is holding him too hard. “It makes sense. I’m apparently the only human still alive in the building, and if you don’t break those lines, you’re going to be trapped in here. And you can call people, but who knows if they’ll get here in time, especially if they start setting things on fire. And you have the rest of the building to think about, and besides, I just need to go break some lines and keep them open. It’s not that hard.”

Derek’s hands contract around Stiles’s waist, nails digging in, and then Alpha Hale looks at them and he drops his hands completely. “It won’t be safe.”

Stiles shrugs, trying to keep from freaking the fuck out because he’s volunteering to do something that’s absolutely ridiculous. “Neither would be being shot or bombed or whatever they’re going to try to do. Think of it as me being selfish if that helps you be okay with me doing it, but unless you have any better options, I’m doing it.”

Alpha Hale watches him for a second, the alarm pulsing overhead, and then she nods. “Go. Derek, Peter, with him, I want you out of this building. I’ll be out as soon as we’re evacuated. Yosef, start the evacuation, get everyone to the west exit. We’re going to want to hold ash-break for as short a time as possible.”

The man at the door nods, then sprints away, and Derek starts herding Stiles out of the room, hand on the small of his back, low whining coming from his throat. And fuck, Stiles is going to need to do some serious groveling to get Derek to stop being pissed at him. But he’s not going to worry about that now; he’s going to worry about the terrorists trying to kill him and about the fact that he’s going to need to stand with his foot in a doorway to get these people to safety.

It takes them maybe thirty seconds to get to the west exit, and by the time they get there, there are a half-dozen half-turned werewolves and more assault rifle fire than he’s ever heard. Peter Hale stops beside them, and when Stiles looks at him, he looks dangerous. “If you step across that line and leave us, I will find a way to tear your throat out.”

Because that isn’t absolutely terrifying. “I’m not leaving my boyfriend behind. You, maybe, but the rest of this the building can—Jesus fucking Christ.” A bullet flies through the door just over his head, and Derek shoves him down so he’s crouching. “Okay. Staying down here. Goddamn it. I’m so much better with rogue werewolves than with fucking assault rifles, Jesus fuck, this is why we stay away from Allison’s lunatic family, there’s a fucking reason for it.” He’s not even sure what he’s saying at this point, crouching between Derek and Peter, his heart pounding in his throat and his breath coming too fast.

A few more werewolves join them, and then messenger guy (Yosef, yes, that’s his name) says, “We’re ready to open the doors. Ashbreaker, are you ready?”

Is Stiles ready to go walk out to where the terrorists with assault rifles are? No way in hell. But he really doesn’t want to be burned alive in this building, and he really doesn’t want to lose his boyfriend, and he really doesn’t want his boyfriend to lose his family, and he really just doesn’t want these people to die, so “Yeah.” He stands, headings over to the door, and the werewolves line up two-by two, except Derek is next to him instead, which is totally not the point, goddamn it. “What the hell are you doing?”

“I’m walking out when you are.”

They don’t have time for this. “The fuck you are. Leave.”

Derek’s hand bites into his waist, bruising-tight. “The last time I was attacked, I lost my family. I am walking out when you do.”

He really doesn’t have time to deal with this, so he just nods to Yosef. “Open it.”

The situation outside is a fucking nightmare, and Stiles doesn’t use that lightly; they faced a rogue werewolf, and this might be scarier than that. There are hunters everywhere, shooting at everything, and there’s a line of ash straight across the doorway; he crouches down, wiping it away, and people start streaming out of building and going after the hunters. There’s blood and violence and Stiles is trying really hard not look at what’s going on because he’s going to pass out if he does, and that’s not fucking happening.

Stiles watches as they go, blurs in the corner of his eye, and it’s like they’re never ending, like there are so many more than there were when they opened the door, and he can barely breathe, his breath catching higher and higher every time he sucks it in, and he’s going to have a panic attack unless this ends soon.

“How many—” Fuck, he can barely speak. “How many more people need to get out?”

Derek’s hand settles on his shoulder. “We need Laura. Just Laura, and then I’m getting you out.” The gunfire gets closer (people get closer) and Derek shoves him down even further as shots ring out, again and again, and then his shoulder gives out in a burst of fire and he slumps over with swearing around him.

His arm stops working quite right, and everything else feels kind of wrong too, but he needs to keep the doorway open because Derek is still in there and so is Alpha Hale, so he flings his non-on-fire arm out to sweep away as much of the mountain ash as he can and keep his hand there, and then he may or may not pass out amidst gunfire and obscenities.

\--

Stiles wakes up to pain, and the feeling of being watched. Which doesn’t answer the question of hospital or serial killer any better than the last time this happened.

The room is white—white walls, white ceiling, white bed—with a blurry blob of darkness and breathing to his left. A moving blurry blob, and he really hopes that’s not a serial killer, because his vision is fucked and blurry and he probably couldn’t defend himself from a kitten, much less whoever Mr. Blob is next to him.

Or Ms. Blob. It could be Ms. Or maybe Mx.

Stiles blinks, and then there’s another Mx. Blob in the room, standing in the doorway with what could be long hair. Or a hood. Or just a weird shirt. And blinking really isn’t helping him, and it’s not helping his arm hurt less, and this is probably a hospital because it’s rare to have two serial killers together. Not impossible, but rare.

“Ashbreaker.”

Stiles blinks again, and the person almost resolves, and then he’s asleep again.


	2. Chapter 2

“Ow.”

Derek glares at Stiles, pushing him back down on to the infirmary bed with one hand on his stomach and one on his good shoulder (and that one on his stomach is really not conducive to relaxation, even if his body isn’t up to anything particularly strenuous. “Stop trying to get up on your own. You’re going to pop your stitches.”

“I know how bullet wounds heal.” He bats at the hand on his good shoulder with his good hand, which is unsurprisingly ineffective. “I’ve even done it once before.”

Derek snarls, the hand on Stiles’s stomach pulling into a fist, and Stiles sucks in a deep breath as that movement does something very interesting below the waist, something that makes Derek’s breathing shift to slow and warm. “Stop trying to distract me.”

Stiles grins at him. “That one’s all on you, dude. Though I’m more than willing to take part.”

A beat, and then the hand smooths out against his stomach, warm and heavy. “When you’re better.”

“Really? You’re no fun.”

“Maybe it’ll make you think twice about getting shot next time.”

Stiles rolls his eyes at that, because really? “It’s not like I was planning on getting shot this time, or last time, which was totally not my fault.” Though speaking of that, “I need to call my dad, before he hears from someone else. You willing to give me a hand sitting up?”

Derek helps prop him up to a vaguely sitting position against the pillows behind him, then hands him his phone form the nightstand. “I’ll give you some privacy and ask them to, too.”

“Thanks.” Derek plants a quick kiss on his lips, then walks out, and Stiles speed-dials his father (#2) and holds it up to his ear with his good ear as it rings.

“Stilinski.”

Stiles smiles. “Hey, it’s me.”

“Hi, son. What’s up?”

Right. He probably should have figured out how to broach the topic before he made the call, but c’est la vie. “What do you know about the attack on the Pack Alliance?”

His dad sighs. “One day I’m going to learn to stop playing along with this, but…they HFU mounted an attack with assault rifles on the Pack Alliance headquarters, killing the ashbreakers and lining the exits. Some kid—your age, maybe, and I know you’re not a kid anymore—held ashbreak so everyone could get out, and so there was only one werewolf casualty during the fighting instead of dozens. Anything else you’re looking for?”

“What do you know about the guy? The kid?” And he kind of feels like a kid right now, like he was just in the police station with Scott bleeding from a gut shot and Matt pointing a gun at his head.

“Nothing. They haven’t released the name or anything.” His tone turns suspicious. “Why? Are you going to try to find this person and pump them for information because the Hales were there? Because let me tell you, they’re just going to want to be left alone.”

“What? No, I wouldn’t do that.” Maybe. Though it would be a good idea, if it wasn’t…him. “No, actually I—you know how I told you I got a new boyfriend? Well, it’s Derek Hale.” Tada. Stiles wants to do jazz hands, except his dad wouldn’t be able to see it, and his shoulder hurts like hell underneath the pain medication.

There’s silence and then, sounding resigned, his dad says, “I don’t want to have to ask this, but did you date him because of that?”

“ _No_. No. I just found out his last name like a week ago. But—well, I was at the attack.” There. He said it.

“How were—son of a bitch, you were the ashbreaker.” His dad sighs. “Damn it, Stiles, there was a reason I told you not to go into ashbreaking. Are you okay?”

He hates how disappointed his dad sounds (it’s not his fault, it’s really not this time). “Yeah. My arm hurts, but yeah, I’m okay.”

“Your man taking care of you?”

Really? “He’s treating me like a freaking invalid, but yeah.”

“He did lose most of his family to the HFU. You might want to cut him a little slack.”

Right. And this is why Stiles is bad at empathy; he doesn’t think of shit like that. “Good point. Yes. Will do.”

There’s silence, and then his dad asks, “Are you sure you’re okay? Do you want me to come see you?”

“No, I’m okay. And I’m in New York—you can’t come all the way out here.”

“I will if you need me to.” There’s a shout in the background, and then the sound of his father swearing. “Okay, I have to go. As soon as you can, come back to Beacon Hills, and bring this Hale with you.”

Oh, that will not be a fun visit. But he really wants to see his dad, to have something familiar and safe in the middle of all of this. “Yeah. I’ll tell you when I’m coming. Be safe.”

“You too.”

Stiles hangs up the phone, staring down at it for a minute. This is not how this weekend was supposed to go. He was supposed to meet Derek’s pack, be intimidated by his alpha, maybe wander around the facility for a while, and then go home secure in the knowledge that Alpha Hale wasn’t going to try to break them up.

Instead they were attacked by terrorists and he was shot, and he has no idea what Alpha Hale really thinks about him, and Peter Hale is scary as shit, and Derek seems to be constantly on the verge of freaking the fuck out, and Stiles is supposed to be back at school in two days to teach, and right now all he wants is for his fucking arm to stop hurting.

And a hug from his dad, and his pack, too.

Raising his voice, he calls, “Derek,” and a couple seconds later Derek opens the door and peers in.

“Do you need something?”

Stiles reaches out with his good arm to make grabby hands (hand) at him, because if he can’t have a hug from his pack, he can at least get a hug from his boyfriend. “Come cuddle with me.”

Derek starts to approach, then hesitates. “I could hurt you.”

Ugh. Really? Stupid overprotective werewolves. “You’re not going to hurt me, and right now I really need some comfort. Please.”

Derek finishes walking over, settling himself down carefully on the bed next to Stiles, who scoots over so there’s space. Kind of. It is a very small bed for a werewolf and another person. And then he wraps his arm around Stiles and pulls him in close, and from the wave of euphoria running through him, starts doing a heavy-duty pain drain from his arm.

“Don’t need to do that,” Stiles tells him, or tries to; it comes out as a semi-coherent slur of syllables as Stiles mashes his face against Derek’s side. Because Derek is comfy even with his muscly-ness.

He snorts. “If you think I’m going to let you suffer when I can do something about it, you’re crazy.” Stiles sinks deeper against Derek, the lack of pain turning all of his muscles into jelly, and Derek’s hand settles on the side of his neck. “I’d enjoy you being like this a lot more if you weren’t injured.”

“Mmhmm.” Stiles’s brain is starting to shut off now, a little bit, the worry-pain-fear-acid-on-his-tongue fading to nothing, and he tries to lean back into the hand because he really likes the feeling of something there, someone holding him, protecting him. But his neck isn’t working properly, and he doesn’t have the energy to do more than curl up against Derek. Which is good, but not exactly what he’s looking for.

He must have made a noise, because Derek asks, “What do you need?”

He wouldn’t admit this if he wasn’t high off of pain meds and pain-drain, but he can’t think of the reasons why he shouldn’t say it, so he mumbles, “Can you hold on harder?” The hand tightens on his neck, thumb pressing into the base of his spine, and it feels really fucking good. Safe. And he really needs to feel safe right now. “Thank you.”

“Course.” Derek presses down a little, guiding Stiles’s head towards his chest, and Stiles lets himself he pushed. Lets himself sink into the warmth and the safety and drift, because things are going to go to hell as soon as he walks out of the building’s doors, he knows it, and he just doesn’t want to think about that right now. So he’s barely conscious when he hears Derek say, “If you want to leave, I’m not going to stop you.”

Stiles flails awake from that, or tries to, the movement jostling his arm as it pulls him awake from Derek, which sends waves of _really fucking awful_ pain through him that knocks his breath away (and maybe this is what it used to feel like to be Scott, before his asthma went away). Derek stays away, a half-inch separating them as he watches, hands opening and closing spasmodically. “What the fuck?” he manages to gasp out finally, good hand closed over his other elbow to try to keep his arm still.

Derek stares at him with an awful look on his face. “If you want to leave, once we get out of here, I’m not going to stop you. And I’m not going to blame you for taking comfort where you can get it, while you’re here.”

The fuck? “Have I said anything—done anything—that makes you think I want to leave? And by leave I assume you mean leave you.”

“I—” Derek’s expression twists. “I got you shot.”

“ _Terrorists_ got me shot. You tried to protect me. And anyway, I wouldn’t break up with you for lunatics trying to kill you. A lunatic tried to kill me. It happens. It sucks, but it happens, and I’m not going to—Jesus, Derek. If this is some bullshit trying to send me away for my own good thing—”

“I’m not selfless enough to send you away for your own good. I don’t want you to leave my side, not when I can have you warm and—but if you walk away from me, I’m not going to try to make you come back. I’m not quite that bad.”

Stiles lets go of his arm to scrub his face with his free hand. “I can’t—”

The door opens, and Stiles drops his head against Derek’s chest because it’s the nearest hard surface for him to face-palm (face-chest?) against. He can’t deal with this. He can’t deal with these people or any of this shit. He just wants to go back to cuddling with Derek and feeling safe and not being interrupted for having to have his blood pressure checked or his eyes or whatever the fuck they want to do this time.

A low growl comes from Derek’s chest, vibrating through Stiles, and a hand settles on the back of his neck again as Derek demands, “What?”

“Alpha Hale wants to speak with the two of you if the ashbreaker is up for it.”

The ashbreaker is not up for it. The ashbreaker wants an orgasm and then some sleep, but the ashbreaker is not going to go that in this facility. “Yeah.” Stiles picks his head up, Derek letting go so he can do so. “Yeah, okay. I just need to put some real clothes on.”

The woman standing in the hallway nods. “I’ll let the alpha know.” And then she leaves and closes the door behind her, and Stiles drops his head back down on Derek’s chest because he so does not want to deal with whatever shit is coming.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter has Laura and Peter again (and has barely been started, so it'll be a bit before it's posted). Do you have any lingering questions that need to be answered? Some more stuff will be answered in the next chapter, but because I know what happened, I'm having a hard time telling what you need to know.


	3. Chapter 3

“—title is _Alpha_ Hale, not Ms., and if you continue to call me that, I’ll rip out your spleen and feed it to you.” Laura looks up from the hole she’s staring in her desk to give a small nod to Stiles and Derek as they walk into her office, then says, “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have someone more important than you to talk to.” And then she hangs up, putting her phone down and turning her attention to the two of them. “Did you know there are no human laws on the books saying that werewolves can’t take part in state legislature?” She doesn’t give him a chance to answer (and he isn’t sure what he would say anyway, because if he did know it, it was from undergrad, and he didn’t know what this had to do with anything), adding, “No, it’s just us. We do that to ourselves.”

“From what I heard of your conversation, I’m assuming that wasn’t a werewolf you were talking to.”

Laura snorts out a laugh. “No, that was the aide to Senator Ellison, the smarmy little asshole.”

“The senator or the aide?”

“Both.” She gestures towards the seats across the desk from her. “Sit. So. Later in this conversation I’m going to offer you a job—don’t make that face at me, Derek, you know protocol—but for right now, we need to talk.”

Fantastic. Just what Stiles wants to hear from his boyfriend’s older sister-slash-alpha. “Yes, ma’am. Alpha. Laura.” Crap. And this is why pain medication is bad when trying to have a conversation.

But Laura just laughed. “I answer to all of those. I’m not sure how much of what happened you actually followed, so I figured I should fill you in. The HFU heard that there would be a Hale pack meeting and attacked in an effort to take out the rest of the pack. They took out the two ashbreakers who were outside and the two who were inside—they had snipers and the ashbreakers were by windows. You were the only human left alive in the building. You’re the reason we’re all alive.” Derek’s hand touches his knee, and Laura’s eyes narrow. “Some of the people here want to give you a medal and make you affiliated with the whole Alliance. Some of the people here want you strung up until you admit that you brought the HFU here.”

A growl starts from Derek’s chest, cutting off when Laura turns her gaze to him. “I’m not a particularly big fan of stringing up humans—or anyone else—without evidence, so I’m going to ask you—do you have any affiliation with the HFU?”

That’s so much more complicated a question than Stiles wants to answer, and the problem is that ‘no’ is a lie they’ll be able to hear. “I—you need to let me give the whole answer before you say anything.”

Laura’s eyebrows go up. “I’ll admit—that’s not the answer I wanted to hear.”

“Yeah, well, the situation’s not really ideal for anyone involved. Junior year of high school, we helped Alison Argent—”

The response is immediately, Derek jerking away from him and Laura shooting to her feet, half-changed already. There’s a growl coming from one of them, or maybe both, and fuck, this is why Stiles hadn’t wanted to answer that question.

“—escape the HFU. She was a year into her induction and was ordered to kill my current Alpha, Scott, who was her on-again, off-again boyfriend at the time. She came to us instead, and we got her out. So yes, but she hasn’t been in willing contact with any of them other than her father, who has also gotten out and is now a legal Hunter, since she got out, so will you stop growling at me, goddamn it, I didn’t tell the HFU to come here and kill my boyfriend.”

The growls cut off, but Derek stays where he is, standing on the other side of his chair, something like horror on his face. Stiles doesn’t try to touch him, isn’t going to try, because he really can’t blame Derek for being upset. He probably should have told Derek before that he was friends with the niece of the person who seduced him and then burned his family down, but that had really not been a conversation he had wanted to have.

Laura sits back down in her chair, scrubbing her hand against her face, then sighs. “Okay. Okay. Jesus. Sit down, Derek, he’s telling the truth.”

Derek stays where he is for another few seconds, his hands trembling, then sinks back down into the chair. “Fuck.” His entire body shudders. “ _Fuck_.”

Stiles can’t do this, can’t keep sitting here watching his boyfriend fall apart; he reaches out a hand, not quite touching, and asks, “Can I—”

Derek makes a low keening noise, which isn’t a particularly helpful answer, but then Laura catches his eye and nods. And that’s basically an answer on its own, because Laura is Derek’s alpha, knows him better than probably anyone in the world. So Stiles puts his hand on Derek’s back, rubbing circles into it until the shaking slows.

And then, finally, Laura snorts; Stiles jumps, his heart feeling like it’s trying to come up through his throat, because wow, he was not expecting that. “Well that was a fun conversation stopper. Okay, I believe you didn’t sell us out. Whatever issues the two of you might run into with the fact that you’re friends with Argent’s niece are for the two of you to work out at a later date. Now we get to the fun part. You saved our lives. Yay. Thanks. We’re all very appreciative. I’m sorry you got shot. Have I forgotten anything?”

“Alliance affiliation.”

Laura looks at Derek, then back at Stiles. “Right. Even if you never ashbreak for us again, you have an invitation to be affiliated with the Alliance. That means that you would be able to request and receive protection from any pack in the Alliance. Specifically it means that you would get the protection of any pack who had a member at the headquarters here today, but most other allied packs would give you protection as well.”

Huh. That’s an old system, one that everyone who studies werewolves knows about, but most affiliations aren’t that broadly given. Especially for a human who hasn’t been part of or related to one of the packs for a while.

“I thank you for the offer, but I can’t accept immediately, because I need to speak to my Alpha about it first. I’m not sure how it conflicts with general pack law or with ours.” Because he is so not an expert on pack law, except for criminal law; the latter is only because they spent so much time dealing with bodies the first couple of years.

Laura nods. “Of course. And now for the last part—the job offer. You have been an ashbreaker for both the Pack Alliance and for the Hale Pack. As such, I am bound by protocol and by rationale to offer you a position as ashbreaker to either my pack or the Pack Alliance. Should you take the position, you will be provided with means, a pack, and, should you require it, housing. What do you say?”

“Thanks, but no. I have a job, and a pack, and…well, thanks. But no.”

Another incline of her head. “Fair enough. Now I need to talk to Derek alone for a bit.”

That’s good, because Stiles really needs to be in a room without an alpha—or, and he feels terrible for feeling this way, his emotionally distraught boyfriend. Because goddamn, but he really managed to pick one with problems. And he lov—really likes Derek. A lot. A lot, a lot. But he’s drained and in pain and he really wants to talk to Scott and get some reassurance from his alpha.

Next he’s going to be on his knees next to someone, being called their good boy and told that they’re doing well and that everything’s going to be alright.

Which actually doesn’t sound too bad.

And now he’s going to stop thinking about that, because he’s still in the room with Derek and Laura, and it’s been an uncomfortable amount of time that he’s been sitting there in silence.

“I’m going to go call Scott. In the hallway.” He stands, and Derek touches his wrist. “I’ll be over there. Bye.”

The hallway is basically empty, probably because if people need to hear stuff, they don’t need to be nearby. So Stiles just leans against the wall and dials Scott’s number, holding his phone up to his shoulder so he can rub his arm. Which doesn’t help. At all. Actually it just makes things hurt more.

It’s like poking a bruise.

He pokes lots of bruises.

Scott picks up less than one ring in. “‘Ashbreaker saves Pack Alliance and Hale Pack, is shot.’”

Fuck.

“Hi, Scott.”

Scott’s voice is tight when he asks, “Did you think I wasn’t going to notice? One of the humans in my pack—one of my best friends—tells me he’s going to the Pack Alliance with his boyfriend, one of the three members of the Hale Pack. And then the Alliance is attacked and the only human left alive saves the Pack Alliance, and the bond might be stretched but I would _know if you were dead_.”

Fuck. “I’m sorry. Look, it was—it wasn’t like I had another choice. It was be their ashbreaker or die, and it wasn’t like I was planning on getting shot.”

“Right.” Scott sighs, and some of the anger drains from his voice. “Right. I know. I just—the bond is stretched so thin right now that I can hardly feel any of you, and it’s—anyway. Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Stiles.”

And this is the problem with talking to Scott, sometimes, when Scott is being alpha-y instead of friend-y. “It hurts, and it’s going to take a while to recover, and it’s going to make sex really difficult, now do you want to keep listening to me talk about it?”

“Not particularly.”

“Yeah.”

Scott laughs. “Okay, now that that’s over with. What’s up? Other than the fact that you were shot and I need to have a nice long talk with your new boyfriend, but that can wait.”

Stiles rubs his shoulder again (and yep, that still hurts, and he’s definitely going to need more pain medication soon). “They invited me to be Pack Alliance affiliated, which seems possibly complicated pack-legality wise. Maybe. I don’t know. I also just—my arm really hurts.” He sounds like a kid now, which is kind of fitting, because he feels like a kid, too. And Scott is like a kid, too, but he’s also alpha, and that means something, and it’s a role he’s grown into.

And sometimes Stiles just doesn’t want to have to deal with the shit of taking care of everything. He did that enough when it came to fighting rogue werewolves and all of the fucking pyschopaths at their school, and when he figured out how packs worked by himself so they could be functional and not torn apart by everyone chomping at the bit to get access to a stupid fucking magic evil tree stump.

Yeah, those were some bad years.

“I know.” Scott sighs. “You going to come home soon? I want the pack here for a while, if we can manage it, try to make it feel a little less we’re gum that we keep trying to stretch across the country.”

Jesus. “Does it really feel like that?”

“To me. Isaac said he can feel it a little, when things are bad, but it’s mostly an alpha thing. I think.” Scott snorts. “You would know this about as well as I would, Mr. PhD.”

“It’s Dr. PhD to you.”

“Right. Tell me when you’re coming home. And please tell me you talked to your dad, because I do not want to be the one telling him that you were shot.”

“Yeah, I talked to my dad. He knows.” His phone beeps at him, because, right, he hasn’t charged it in like two days. “Okay, I have to go, because I’m at like four percent battery. I’ll call you back.”

“Call Isaac, too, please, he’s freaking out. I’ve barely convinced him you’re still alive and that he’s not going to lose the pack.”

Oh, God. Isaac is pretty much the most fragile person in the pack, which is saying something, because the pack is basically made up of barely-functional half-shattered people. Plus Lydia. And playing any part in scaring Isaac is like kicking a puppy. A fluffy puppy with fantastic cheekbones.

“Once I charge my phone. Talk to you later.”

“Bye.”

Stiles ends the call, then sticks his phone in his pocket. It’ll die one way or another, so why not keep it on until then.

Derek is apparently still talking to Laura—or they’re crying it out or something, he’ll probably find out later, and wow being shot makes him pissy—so Stiles just leans back against the wall and closes his eyes and tries to breathe.

“Ashbreaker.”

Oh fuck, he knows that voice. And that face, because oh shit Peter Hale is standing in front of him, half-turned with blue fucking eyes like a scary fucking werewolf of death. “Hi.” Stiles pushes back up against the wall a little, trying to get further away from the absolutely fucking terrifying person werewolf man standing in front of him, which does absolutely nothing for him. “Um. Yeah. I mean, no, I was only the ashbreaker once, and I’m not going to be the ashbreaker again, so yeah. Mr. Hale.”

Peter Hale tilts his head to the side, like he’s considering Stiles. “You know, you might have Laura convinced, and Derek is so whipped you could whip out your pretty little ass and he would follow you into hell just to get a piece of it, but I’m not that stupid.”

Stiles opens his mouth to say something witty, or maybe even intelligent, but all that comes out is, “You think my ass is pretty?”

Lip lifted in a snarl, Peter lunges at him, hand closing around his throat, and his nails are long enough to tear into his throat as he _picks him up off the ground which really fucking hurts holy shit ow._ “I am not playing with you, human. I may not like the members of pack, but they are my pack, and my family, and I will not let you put them in danger again. Not by convincing Laura to oppose this bill and not by bringing the HFU to our doorsteps.”

“It wasn’t—” He sounds like a chain smoker. “It wasn’t me. I’m not with the HFU.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Stiles tries to hit him with his not-fucked-up arm, which does exactly nothing except getting Peter to tighten his hold. He needs his mountain ash, but there was no way in hell he was going to get it into the Alliance building, which is really fucking unfortunate right now. “Let me go.”

“Maybe I’ll just kill you.” He bares his teeth, which are terrifyingly sharp. “Just rip your throat out. Derek will be sad, sure, but he’ll get over it. He always does.”

Stiles keeps struggling, but it’s not doing anything, and Jesus fuck he’s going to be killed by his boyfriend’s lunatic uncle instead of by terrorists. What the fuck is his life.

And then Peter is torn away from him, nails scraping across his throat, and he drops to the ground, legs crumpling under him as he falls to his knees, gasping for breath. Arms go around him, and he turns into Derek’s chest and tries really hard not to cry because that would be the embarrassing cherry on top of the pile of shit that is this weekend.

Finally, he gets his voice back enough to tell Derek, “I want to go home.”

And then he loses the battle and cries.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next story will be happier, I promise.

**Author's Note:**

> There will be three chapters in this piece. Also, LAURA! AND PETER! (We will see more of the two of them, I promise.)


End file.
